Before Dawn, We Fled To Our Staterooms, But By Sunrise We Were
Glad To Dress And Escape From Their Suffocating Heat And Go On
Deck Again.
Black coffee and hard-tack were sent up, and this
sustained us until the nine-o'clock breakfast, which was
elaborate, but not good.
There was no milk, of course, except the
heavily sweetened sort, which I could not use: it was the
old-time condensed and canned milk; the meats were beyond
everything, except the poor, tough, fresh beef we had seen
hoisted over the side, at Cape St. Lucas. The butter, poor at the
best, began to pour like oil. Black coffee and bread, and a baked
sweet potato, seemed the only things that I could swallow.
The heat in the Gulf of California was intense. Our trunks were
brought up from the vessel's hold, and we took out summer
clothing. But how inadequate and inappropriate it was for that
climate! Our faces burned and blistered; even the parting on the
head burned, under the awnings which were kept spread. The
ice-supply decreased alarmingly, the meats turned green, and when
the steward went down into the refrigerator, which was somewhere
below the quarter-deck, to get provisions for the day, every
woman held a bottle of salts to her nose, and the officers fled
to the forward part of the ship. The odor which ascended from
that refrigerator was indescribable: it lingered and would not
go. It followed us to the table, and when we tasted the food we
tasted the odor.
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